Another
Try by Google to Take On Facebook. By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER
But Google+ may already be too late. In May, 180 million people visited Google
sites, including YouTube, compared with 157.2 million on Facebook, according to
comScore. But Facebook users looked at 103 billion pages and spent an average of
375 minutes on the site, while Google users viewed 46.3 billion pages and spent
231 minutes. Fac

Google isn't just taking on Microsoft... By Cade Metz
It's turning Microsoft's aging Office business against itself. In addition to
plugging Microsoft Office into Google Apps via Cloud Connect, Google has turned
Gmail into a Microsoft Exchange backup service. It's offering a plug-in that
transforms Outlook into a Gmail client. And, now, as Microsoft prepares to
launch its latest online business productivity service - Office 365 - Mountain
has called on Sinha to tell the world why the new Redmond suite pales in
comparison to Google Apps. ggl

Get over failure and venture boldly forth: California's technology hotbed sets
an example ... Here are five pieces of advice ... 1. EMBRACE FAILURE. In ...
Europe there is a stigma attached to having set up a company that subsequently
failed. In Silicon Valley, failure is seen as giving you experience - if you
haven't failed a couple of times you are probably not ready to succeed. 2.
IMPORT TALENT. ... the San Francisco Bay area and Silicon Valley are a melting
pot of nationalities, largely due to talent being attracted to work in tech.
'All these great founders weren't from here. We imported them,' says Don Wood...
Silicon Valley has always embraced diversity and celebrated great engineers.' 3.
BE CONFIDENT. In California there is little fear of leaving a big employer such
as Facebook or Google to pursue a start-up... And, ironically, in the Valley,
doing your own start-up can actually be a good way to get a senior position with
one of the big players. Google thinks nothing of paying $20 million for a
fledgling firm simply to acquire its engineering and executive talent ... svg

Apple, Intel,
Google, Others Allegedly Conspired to Stiff Workers. By Damon Poeter
A former Lucasfilm software engineer on Wednesday filed a class-action lawsuit
against a who's who of Silicon Valley tech giants, alleging a conspiracy to fix
employee pay and not poach staff away from each other in violation of anti-trust
laws...The suit claims that an alleged "no-solicitation" agreement between the
named companies resulted in employee compensation being reduced by "10 to 15
percent" as compared to "what would have prevailed in a properly functioning
labor market where employers compete for workers." In addition to an alleged
pact between the companies to avoid actively recruiting each other's employees,
the suit alleges that the firms agreed to notify each other when making an offer
to another company's employee without the employee's consent or knowledge.
Another alleged agreement between the companies set a cap on pay packages
offered to prospective employees...The suit alleges that Lucasfilm and Pixar
first entered a "no solicitation" agreement with regards to each other's workers
in 2005. The practice allegedly spread to the other companies named in the suit
later... cls

Will
Israel's Electric Cars Change the World? By Karl Vick / Ramat Hasharon
The pricing will be in two parts: First there's the car itself, which the
consumer buys outright, except for the battery. That ... comes with the
"subscription," which is what ... access to the power infrastructure to run the
car. The model is cell-phone coverage, with a variety of rate plans that vary
with how much you drive. Rates for Israel are not yet final, but in Denmark,
where the company is also setting up, the lowest rate is equivalent to about
$300 a month for mileage of 6,200 miles (10,000 km); the highest rate - for
unlimited miles - is about twice as much. The customers also pay a one-time fee
equal to $2,000, but even so, in both Israel and Denmark where gas runs about $9
a gallon,.. the typical customers would stand to save 10% to 20%
against a comparable gasoline car - and enjoy most of its satisfactions. "The
car is very, very, very fun to drive," .... car

Tech jobs boom like it's 1999. By Jon Swartz
The jump in tech hires highlights what some economists see as a bounce-back in
the $805 billion U.S. tech industry that could eventually make a dent in the
national unemployment rate of 8.8%. 'The majority of the lost jobs in California
were in construction and manufacturing, so gains in tech may help,' says Doug
Henton, CEO of market researcher Collaborative Economics... Nearly 150,000 tech
jobs are expected to be added this year, says Sophia Koropeckyj, an economist at
Moody's Analytics. In February, there were about 6.1 million tech jobs in the
U.S., up 2.4% from a year ago. Yet there's a lot to make up for: From the second
quarter of 2008 through the first quarter of 2010, during the economic swoon,
308,000 tech jobs were lost.' job

Obama, Zuckerberg meeting highlights importance of Silicon Valley. By
Cecilia Kang
President Obama and 26-year-old Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg, a billionaire
college dropout, may seem like an unlikely duo. But ... Obama was introduced to
much of the nation through Facebook and Google's YouTube... Meanwhile, Facebook
needs to have good relations with Washington regulators and lawmakers. It is
under increased scrutiny by federal officials over how its social networking
business - where information is the currency for business online - could curtail
the privacy of consumers... Zuckerberg, who wasn't personally engaged in Obama's
2008 campaign like Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, joins his business
contemporaries relatively late. He and Apple CEO Steve Jobs only began to
interact more closely with Obama in the past year. In February, both were part
of an exclusive presidential dinner with a handful of CEOs ....
/See also:
$Trillion
scale of dinner. In other words Obama desperately needs a Facebbok
channel. 'Meanwhile, Facebook needs to have good relations with Washington
regulators and lawmakers. It is under increased scrutiny by federal officials
...' As it was told by someone from Chicago, "you can get much
further with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone." zuk

HP management shakeup continues
Hewlett-Packard named Martin Homlish to the post of chief marketing officer on
Tuesday, the latest attempt by CEO Leo Apotheker to reshape management at the
world's largest computer maker. Homlish was formerly marketing chief at
Apotheker's last company, SAP, the German software giant. /See
also: NDA experiment set up by Mark Hurdnda

2010 was
the most profitable year in history of Silicon Valley. By Brandon Bailey
and Jack Davis
The combined stock market value of the SV150 hit $1.55 trillion ... the
highest level since the Internet boom of 2000... . But after laying off
thousands during the downturn, many were cautious about adding new jobs...
While unemployment has been easing, state officials say the rate is still 10.3
percent in Santa Clara County, the geographic heart of Silicon Valley... Big
companies also gobbled up scores of smaller firms last year,.. Net cash spent on
acquisitions rose 47 percent, to $22.6 billion. All told, SV150 members bought
170 companies in 2010... companies from startups to giants are moving into
social networking and mobile computing ... "a renewed level of energy and
optimism in Silicon Valley."
/ See also: Silicon Valley Top 150 Companies prf

Microsoft Could Lose More Than Consumer Market To Tablets. By Paul
McDougall
Businesses are starting to ditch Windows PCs and notebooks in favor of mobile
devices from Apple and others, triggering little response from Redmond. The iPad
and other tablets are taking a big bite out of consumer sales of Windows PCs,
but Microsoft's dominance of enterprise computing is safe from slates, right?
Wrong. New research shows that, contrary to what many pundits first believed,
tablets are making significant inroads in the business market as companies look
to give employees more technology choice and flexibility. That Microsoft won't
have a true slate OS for at least a year could create even more space for Apple,
Google, Research In Motion, and others to get their tablets on workers' desks...
tablets are headed to the enterprise in a big way. tab

Mobile-App Makers Face U.S. Privacy Investigation
Federal prosecutors in New Jersey are investigating whether numerous smartphone
applications illegally obtained or transmitted information about their users
without proper disclosures... The criminal investigation is examining whether
the app makers fully described to users the types of data they collected and why
they needed the information-such as a user's location or a unique identifier for
the phone ... Collecting information about a user without proper notice or
authorization could violate a federal computer-fraud law... The Journal tested
101 apps and found that 56 transmitted the phone's unique device identifier to
other companies without users' awareness or consent. Forty-seven apps
transmitted the phone's location in some way. Five sent a user's age, gender and
other personal details to outsiders. By AMIR EFRATI, SCOTT THURM and DIONNE
SEARCEY

When Is
a Tech Company Dead? By Om Malik
Yahoo is dead. Microsoft is so dead. Nokia is dead... when a company will no
longer be involved in generating the next round of real energy in the
tech/internet world, and when they hit that point, they never come back to be an
energy creator and so they are 'dead' in West Coast minds... What about Oracle
and IBM as examples of large undead companies...? .... IBM, despite its
size, has managed to reinvent and reboot itself many times - from a typewriter
maker to mainframe computers to desktops to a services-driven company. IBM has
used its massive R&D spending to become young again and again... Oracle is an
exception mostly because of its leader, Larry Ellison, who is a businessperson
at heart, and who knows technology and perfected a buy-and-grow strategy for his
company. What these two examples show is that even an older company can thrive
if it: Successfully reboots and redefines itself for the future, so it can
attract the talent to get it to the future. Is run by a technologically-savvy
founder.
mal

Statistics
offer glimpses into how Silicon Valley lives.By Scott Herhold
Sixty percent of the engineering and scientific talent in the [Silicon] valley
is born outside the U.S. Nationally, that's the case for only 21 percent of
workers. Of the total number of engineers and scientists in the valley, 28
percent comes from India, up from 20 percent a decade ago.
sta

You can't call "time out" in Silicon Valley. By Rob Enderle
Microsoft vs. Apple. When Apple announced the iPad, it declared war on the PC...
Microsoft could finish and field Origami on tablets more quickly, or scale
Windows Phone 7 up like Google initially did with Android to provide an interim
alternative, and then market the result on advantages like full Flash support,
better security, and better compatibility with more traditional applications.
But, by not doing this, the battle may be over before Microsoft can field its
alternative, as the iPad is now being integrated as standard in consumer
electronics... Google vs. Apple. The news this week is that Motorola is thinking
of building an OS and abandoning Android. Several other vendors are considering
similar moves, and HP was the first to act on this problem when it bought Palm
to avoid Android... If Android loses, it won't be because of Apple, it will be
because Google starved it to death, Apple will just be the biggest beneficiary.
amg

The first business incubator CzechAcclerator in Silicon Valley, USA,
has been a success and the Industry and Trade Ministry wants to expand the
business incubator network as of next year... New business incubators are to
start working in Singapore, Israel and Switzerland. "In the pilot round, we have
covered for participants the lease of offices and related services in Silicon
Valley," said CzechInvest CEO Miroslav Krizek. "In the new programme, we will
cover participation in conferences and training courses, and buying licences. We
will also provide some money for professional advisers and will partly cover
stays and transport," Krizek said. As of July of the year there will be two
business incubators available in the USA for Czech firms, one on the western
coast and the other on the eastern coast of the USA...
cze

UK startups benefit from Silicon Valley Web Mission. By by Matthew
Finnegan
For the past few years a number of promising web technology companies have been
invited to travel to Silicon Valley ... And this March another set of the UK's
best growing companies set out to meet with industry leaders, investors and
potential business partners... 'The original Web Mission was designed purely to
get investment, however it quickly became clear that other benefits were there
to be had from the firms in the US, ... It gives the possibility to meet
competitors and collaborators and vitally establish business links ... In Europe
particularly there is much more of a hierarchy and atmosphere in which people
are less willing to learn or to share knowledge...This is certainly not the case
in the Valley'...ukm

The Search for Ingredients to Replicate Silicon Valley. By STEVEN M.
DAVIDOFF
The truth is, there is no consensus on how to create this community ... many are
trying and few are succeeding. France, Norway and Malaysia have all failed
despite fervent efforts. In the United States, California still dominates.
Thirty-five companies on The Wall Street Journal's 2011 list of the top 50
venture capital-backed investments are based in California. Mr. Zuckerberg
started in Boston but went west to Palo Alto... No government is going to create
the next Google, Microsoft or Facebook. The race is really one to create systems
to nurture the next superstar company... While the payoff is uncertain, the
rewards can be spectacular.
dav

Reality Check: Seven trends to track in mobile handset market. By Mitch
Cline
1. Smart phones invading the enterprise... Security threats will be big factors
in determining which companies aggressively deploy smart phones. 2. Smart phones
in China ... more than half (53%) of Chinese respondents in urban areas
currently own a smart phone, which exceeds the percentage of ... the United
States. 3. Super phones ... can be thought of as the next generation smart
phone, boasting a more powerful chip than current generation smart phones... 4.
Mobile OS battles... 5. Smart phone and tablet convergence ... 6. Payments and
banking go mobile... 7. Embedded features... Some of the biggest business
opportunities in the smart phone business this year will be in providing
smarter, more versatile and more reliable embedded software.7tr

Made in
America: small businesses buck the offshoring trend. By Brendan I.
Koerner
Labor costs in China and other developing nations have been so cheap that as
recently as two or three years ago, anyone who refused to offshore was viewed as
a dinosaur, certain to go extinct as bolder companies built the future in Asia.
But stamping out products in Guangdong Province is no longer the bargain it once
was, and US manufacturing is no longer as expensive... 19 percent of the
companies that responded to an October survey by MFG.com, an online sourcing
marketplace, said they had recently brought all or part of their manufacturing
back to North America from overseas, up from 12 percent in the first quarter of
2010. This is one reason US factories managed to add 136,000 jobs last year -
the first increase in manufacturing employment since 1997.

Bring High-Tech Manufacturing Back to Silicon Valley. By Henry R. Hank
Nothhaft
... the myth still persists ... that so long as America is strong in R&D and
services, we can let others do the manufacturing. Unfortunately, there are three
things wrong with that theory. First, our R&D and services are also being
outsourced to China and elsewhere along with manufacturing. Which leaves us
where, exactly - other than in ever-increasing debt? Second, R&D
de-coupled from manufacturing eventually results in the loss of incremental
innovation which occurs on the factory floor and, inevitably, a leadership
position. Just ask anyone in the semiconductor business. But third and most
importantly, manufacturing is the most powerful economic force multiplier in the
world, creating up to 15 additional jobs outside of manufacturing for every job
on the factory floor...
mnf

New
Rules for the New Internet Bubble. By Steve Blank
Paths to Liquidity: a quick history of the four waves of startup investing.
* The Golden Age (1970 - 1995): Build a growing business with a consistently
profitable track record (after at least 5 quarters,) and go public when it's
time. * Dot.com Bubble (1995-2000): 'Anything goes' as public markets clamor
for ideas, vague promises of future growth, and IPOs happen absent regard
for history or profitability. * Lean Startups/Back to Basics (2000-2010): No
IPO's, limited VC cash, lack of confidence and funding fuels 'lean startup'
era with limited M&A and even less IPO activity. * The New Bubble: (2011 -
2014): Here we go again ...
bln

Forrester
Research CEO George Colony ... predicts Net links for billions of products
... from 750 million devices connected to the Internet today to 14
billion by the end of this decade... With OnStar, GM has tagged 10 million
or 15 million vehicles... GM knows every gauge in your car real-time. They
know what CD you're playing, and they know what CD track you're playing.
And, of course, your location and speed, how much gas is in your tank, et
cetera. They aren't doing anything with it because they haven't figured out
how to monetize it.
for

'The Start-Up Visa Act'
A group of lawmakers and prominent technology investors are trying to ease
bureaucratic hurdles for thousands of foreign-born entrepreneurs as part of
a broader effort to create jobs in the United States and spur innovation. A
new bill - introduced ... by Senators John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat;
Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican; and Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat -
aims to give two-year visas to foreign entrepreneurs if they secure at least
$100,000 in financing from qualified investors. After two years, the
start-up must have at least five employees and $500,000. See more at
Silicon Valley Backs Effort to Help Foreign Entrepreneurs By
EVELYN M. RUSLI
vis

Five overhyped tech trends for 2011. By Bill Predmore
1. Google Chrome OS ... as businesses will ignore Chrome OS and consumers
will be too busy playing Angry Birds on their iPad 2 to care. 2. Internet
TV... Until the cable companies can be removed from the equation (or they
deliver some innovative set-top hardware of their own) nothing in this
category will live up to the hype. 3. The iPad as the savior of magazine
publishers. While we should applaud (some) magazine publishers for
reinventing their content to take advantage of all the iPad has to offer, it
won't be enough to save them... 4. Tablets will eliminate the market for
single-purpose devices. Despite any magical power it may have, the iPad
revolution won't eliminate consumer demand for great single-purpose devices
like the Kindle or Nintendo DS... 5hp

The die of the 4004 processor consisted of 2,300 transistors. The current
2nd gen Intel® Core™processor has almost one billion transistors. This is like
comparing the population of a large village to the population of China.

Had today’s 2nd gen Intel Core processor (actual size: 216mm2 / equals 0.33
sq. inch) been manufactured in the historic 10μ process technology it would be
as large as 21m2 (equals 227 sq.
ft.). Or roughly 7m x 3m (equals 23ft x 10ft). Can you imagine a monster like
that inside your laptop?

The Intel 4004 microprocessor ran at 740 kilohertz (the current 2nd
generation of Intel Core processors achieves almost 4 GHz. If the speed of cars
had increased at the same pace since 1971, it would take about one second to
drive from San Francisco to New York ...

The current Intel Core processor has 995 million transistors. If each
transistor were a grain of rice, it would be enough to prepare a rice meal for
all people in Poznan (Poland), Stuttgart or Düsseldorf (Germany), Glasgow (UK)
or any city with approximately 567 thousand citizens.

Compared to Intel’s first microprocessor, the 4004, Intel’s current 32nm
CPU runs almost 5000 times faster and each transistor uses about 5000 times less
energy. In the same period, the price of a transistor has dropped by a factor of
about 50,000.

How Bavaria became a European silicon valley By Julia Kollewe ...
... a factor in the region's success is a close-knit network of 13 universities
and a plethora of public research organisations such as the Fraunhofer and Max
Planck institutes. Academics at the London School of Economics laud Munich as a
model of "institutional thickness"... More than 55,000 people work in research
and development in and around Munich. For over two decades, Munich has had
Germany's highest share of technology patents by population... Max Nathan, a
research fellow at LSE Cities, who co-wrote a paper on Munich published last
December, has found many parallels between Munich and California's Bay area.
"Over the past 60 years, both have shifted from mainly rural communities to
hi-tech hubs. Both offer a strong economy and an excellent quality of life -
something that's helped keep people in the area," he wrote.
/ See also:
Why Berlin Needs To Become Europe's Silicon Valley,
What's wrong with European venture capital? bav

In
Silicon Valley, no immediate threat to supply chains from Japan disaster
'It's really too early to tell what is going to change and what is not,'
said Jim Handy, the principal analyst at Objective Analysis. Last year, Japanese
companies racked up 13.9 percent of all global electronic equipment factory
revenue, according to an IHS iSuppli estimate. The country's sophisticated
manufacturing includes computers, consumer electronics devices and
communications gear. Japan produced $216.6 billion worth of electronic equipment
in 2010... Amount Japanese companies generated in microchip revenue,
representing 20.8 percent of the worldwide market 10 percent Japan's slice of
the worldwide pie of DRAM manufacturing based on wafer production 35 percent
Japanese companies' share of NAND flash production revenue No. 3
jch

Mozilla
is prepping to ship the final version of its new Firefox 4 browser
... By Mark Long
While IE dominates the browser market, it has been falling with Firefox in
second place and Chrome third. A new JagerMonkey JS engine adds speed to Firefox
4 and WebGL will allow better graphics... According to Net Applications,
Internet Explorer led the global browser market in February [2011] with a 56.77
percent share, followed by Firefox (21.74 percent), Google Chrome (10.93
percent), and Apple's Safari (6.36 percent).
far

Local
Analyst Describes Impact of Japan Quake on Silicon Valley
Jim Handy of Objective Analysis in Los Gatos is warning that the earthquake in
Japan will undoubtedly affect Silicon Valley. Some 30 to 40 percent of all
semiconductors used worldwide come from Japan, and more specifically, from the
main island of Honshu, which was affected by the quake, he explains. Within the
coming months, we could see 'phenomena price swings and large near-term
shortages'...
jap

10 tech trends to watch in 2011. By Gary Marshall
1. 3D. The jury's still out on whether 3D is going to be a lasting part of
our lives, but it's going to be coming at us like props in a gimmicky 3D movie
throughout 2011... 2. Android Tablets, Apple rivals and iPad 2 ... 2011 is going
to be tablet-tastic. 3. Cloud storage and streaming... 4. Location-based
services ... 5. Augmented Reality... The latest generation of Google Earth shows
just how blurry the line between the real and virtual worlds is becoming. 6.
Stunning Tablet screens ... 7. Mobile capacity problems ... 8. Mobile tickets
and payments ... 9. E-Ink... Combine colour e-ink with Sony's touch-controlled
e-readers and you've got something very exciting indeed. 10. Apps, not
applications... instead of buying an expensive enormo-suite every few years, the
App Store model is more about impulse buying and fragmentation, where you end up
buying lots of ultra-cheap apps that do one or two things particularly well.
/ More about the recent High Tech Trendsukm

Gartner Identifies
the Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2011
Cloud Computing... Mobile Applications and Media Tablets... Social
Communications and Collaboration... Video ... is not a new media form, but its
use as a standard media type used in non-media companies is expanding rapidly...
Next Generation Analytics... Social Analytics... describes the process of
measuring, analyzing and interpreting the results of interactions and
associations among people, topics and ideas... Context-Aware Computing...
computing centers on the concept of using information about an end user or
object's environment, activities connections and preferences to improve the
quality of interaction with that end user...
grt